Flash
by YuuIsAVampida
Summary: You know when you die and people say you're supposed to have your life flash before your eyes, right? Yeah well that's not my case. Matt just flipped us both off a cliff and the next thing I know, I'm some kid named Mail Jeevas.


There are a lot of things that the kids at Wammy's have gotten wrong about Matt and I over the years. They assumed they knew everything just because L decided to label them as "geniuses"; and in actuality, they were pretty stupid to believe just anything they'd heard in the halls.

So I'd like to clear some of those things up. It's more for me than for anyone else's sake.

Matt and I were never best friends. We were never even friends in the first place. We were acquaintances, nothing more. You know those people you wouldn't go to the mall with on the weekends, but you wouldn't exactly ignore if they called your phone? That's what we were. We'd greet each other in the hallways, and chitchat in the back of boring classes, but that doesn't mean we were friends.

Matt just was never the type of guy I'd made friends with. The kids at Wammy's always thought that Matt was always trying his best to succeed L like all the rest of us, but he stayed in third place for all those years with a purpose. He was an arrogant jerk who knew he could be first and had done so for several months; his little surprises happened even more frequently after Near showed up. But he thought he was above the whole Wammy's system and wasn't afraid to made it known.

Moving on to what they assumed Matt's personality to be, which pisses me off even more.

All I can say is that no one knew who Matt really was besides Matt himself, and maybe I can't even say that much. He was very much like L, way too secretive. But being like L was exactly what he was avoiding.

He might not have seemed like a complete social recluse like L, but the only reason he talked to any of us was to keep appearances up. He didn't give a damn about any of his friends at the orphanage. No, he only used them when he needed them, when the adults were around. Any other time, he rudely dismissed them like they were the dirt beneath his shoes. All he was worried about was staying categorized as a normal child in L's radar, not getting any attention from L because he simply didn't _want_ to be L. He wanted nothing to do with L; he wanted to shirk his way out of the future Mr. Wammy and L kindly offered to an orphaned boy who would have ended up on the streets dead somewhere otherwise.

You see, that's where our personalities would have clashed. Unlike that ungrateful brute, I actually worked to get to my place as second. Every single night when Matt was in his room blasting his loud meaningless music and playing those mind-numbing computer games, I sat in my room with my face buried into dozens of L's old case files trying to solve them all faster than Near, faster than Matt, and faster than _L._

I had to claw my way through hundreds other kids just to get to into the top twenty-six, and then I had to fight even harder just to get to second place, but Matt could be at the top spot without even trying, he truly was a genius. But he's that much of a stubborn, unmotivated _child_ that he was content with being in third place, being left to rot in this orphanage.

So in short, Matt was not my other half, no matter what you may have heard.

We'd never gone anywhere together outside of Wammy's, so that day on the cliff, I was, for lack of a better word, befuddled as to why Matt had followed me. I'd found out about the place a while back (after another one of the jerk's surprising bouts of motivation, I'd placed third and had left the house, looking for somewhere peaceful to study more/fume and _voila_, I found a cliff) and the thought of another Wammy's kid ending up here hadn't even crossed my mind.

So when I had parked the car a while away from the cliff itself, courtesy of Mr. Wammy, I was dumbfounded as a sleek, shiny sports car, vibrating with the loud music pouring out of the speakers, pulled up next to me. Out of instinct, I glanced into the car and narrowed my eyes when I saw Matt grinning at me from the driver's seat as he rolled down the window and turned down the music a bit. I did the same and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. He didn't say anything, the jerk, so I asked after a while,

"What are you doing here?"

He just shrugged and looked straight ahead at the fog surrounding both our cars. I swear to God, I hate when he does this. You see, this is why we could never be friends. He gets my blood boiling with the smallest of things.

"So in Matt-speak, you were following me." He smiled and nodded, finally looking back at me as if he was ready to say something.

"How'd you find out about this place, Mello? I've been coming here for years and I've never seen you around." He took the words right out of my mouth, not that I would ever tell him that.

"It's a pretty good study place, huh? Especially if you're alone." I bit out, stepping out of the car. I gently closed the door even though I'd much rather slam it loudly and storm off. But then Roger would give birth to a farm and call Mr. Wammy on me, so I put up with Matt's snicker. And of course, Matt got out of his car as well.

"You never answered my question, Matt." I called, not bothering to lock the car door (I mean, who would drive to a cliff to steal a car anyway?) and I walked towards the slope leading to the cliff.

"And what was that question?"

"You're first now; I'd think you ought to be able to remember a question for five minutes."

"Ah, right, that'd be something for you to tell me, wouldn't it, third? Why not score first place _then_ try to mock me!" I turned around and I felt my body go hot and red with anger as the words settled in. I forced all that raw venom to seep through my eyes to glare at Matt who had actually stopped walking and widened his eyes.

I opened my mouth to let loose a long thread of harsh words when I just sighed and shook my head. Matt wasn't even worth getting angry at. Any other time, I'd defend myself if someone had said something like that, but I know that Matt said that because he has nothing else to say. The reason why he didn't answer my question is that he had no answer, he didn't know where he was going and he never _did_ know where he was going. He might be superior to me in intellect, but since he has no goals in life, what's the point of it? I mumbled a "Whatever." And I turned around to keep walking. He can be an ass if he wants to; I came here for a reason, and damn it, he was _not_ getting in the way of that.

Well, that's what I thought at the time at least.

So, I took my seat at the edge of the cliff, dangling my feet and peering down through the thick fog molding against the dark blue of the ocean beneath us. It probably smelled of rain back at the orphanage like it did here. And everyone was probably slouching around, reading books…

Matt plopped down on the end next to mine, his left side facing my back. Instantly, wet droplets began falling from the gray clouds in rapid fire and I heard the familiar _snap_ as Matt put his goggles in place, followed by a _whump _as he lay back on the damp grass. The cliff was pretty wide, so his head was still comfortably resting on the cliff and not dangling over the edge. I felt his curious glance burning on the back of my neck. With a sigh, I stood and spun around and crossed my legs on the way to sit back down, now facing Matt.

"What is it?" He kept his eyes trained on me with a look of absolute boredom which completely contrasted with what he was about to ask me.

"Mello, have you ever thought about what it'd be like to jump?"

I've been told by countless people that my face can be read like an open children's book lying next to a dictionary, so there was no doubt in my mind that Matt could clearly read the "Oh my God, he's trying to commit suicide" stunned look on my face, especially with him scrutinizing every move I made with his piercing gaze.

"I mean, like besides the glaring fact that you'd most likely be jumping to your death, haven't you ever thought about what it'd _feel_ like? It would be like a rush of cold air and you'd just be falling with that 'Well, shit, I've messed up' thought and knowing that you can't do anything to change it…it'd be like a rush of freedom." Well, the one positive thing that came from that day is that I finally found what Matt was passionate about: cliff diving. He continued, "that is, until you fall face first to the ground. But you see what I mean right?" He abruptly stood up and dusted the dirt off his backside and stepped closer to the edge.

I think this would be an appropriate time for me to explain this cliff of mine. The cliff was, on estimate, as tall as a ten story high building. And this cliff of mine did have a large lake, but there was a long strip of sand and rocks before it met the cliff. This meant, in the simplest of terms, that you were most likely going to die or be severely injured if you jumped off, simple as that.

"Matt, what are you doing?" The alarm was evident in my voice. Like I said, the only one who knows Matt is Matt himself, and I was torn between believing that he was just screwing around, and that Matt was seriously about to off himself by playing bird.

"Chill, Mello, it's just like cliff diving," he smirked, "without the water and way more dangerous."

"What do you mean _chill_? I'm not gonna stand here and watch you kill yourself, stupid!"

I remembered the constant image of my mother with that calm expression as she stepped backwards closer to the edge of our roof, peeking out from under my hands even though she told me to cover my eyes.

For a while there, we were completely silent. Matt's hair shifted further into his face and I could just barely see his eyes.

If I were ever to describe Matt as an animal, I would compare him to a lion. And no, not because of his wild hair or his yawn in the middle of class, but because of what happened next. Lions are not the type of animals who lunge as soon as they capture their prey. No, lions lie in wait until their prey begin to think, "Hmm, this lion must be a vegetarian," and that's when they leap in for the kill. Strong, and ruthless as they tear into their poor prey, glancing at their lifeless form with a glint of satisfaction in their eyes.

And that's just what Matt did.

We were silent for so long that it had seemed to me that Matt had just stood up to look at the view from cliff and that I had just been paranoid because of the nonsense he'd been talking a second ago. I took a deep sigh and my wide eyes had calmed as the muscles in my arms had relaxed from being prepared to snatch Matt's ankle when he tried to jump.

In the time it took me to take a much needed blink, Matt had already bent his legs and was suspended in the air. Without even thinking, I jumped after him, trying to grab onto his ankle like I had originally planned. I think L would roll his eyes in embarrassment if he found out that I had actually thought I could stop someone from jumping off a cliff from 3 feet away, and then he'd roll them again, and twice as hard this time, because I'd reached so far out that I had fallen over myself right behind Matt.


End file.
